Inside Social Games

Porting console games to Facebook is a difficult thing to master, much like the primitive games they port. While very popular with old players who have grown up with Super Mario and TNMT, port applications often suffer from a raw interface and a low effort to engage the larger social community.

As a game, NES Games has nothing wrong with it. As a social game, there is much to be desired. Like many ports, the developers seem to just throw the ROM material up on the site and hope that the user figures out what to do with it.

NES Games has a lot going for it. Over a thousand NES titles, to be exact. This includes Duck Tales, the NES Game, which is the greatest game of all time. Additionally, the app has a user rating system, a tiny invite button, and a way to submit other ROMs to the list.

That said, the games are prone to crash your browser, some just don’t work, and the app suffers from a sloppy interface. It is what it is – more of a static website than a moving, breathing fiber in the social graph.

Gameplay: 10 (Duck Tales!)

Development: 3

How many games? 1440 by my count.